Michael Cox
5/6/16
Prof Krapp
Long Essay Assignment
Prompt One
Throughout the course of Ethics and Literature, we were presented with many great
examples of characters that have dealt with ordinary dilemmas pertaining to right and wrong,
and good and evil. In many of the texts covered during this course, characters that represent
both normal and abnormal persons are confronted with questions pertaining to God and
Christianity. The three texts that I will be discussing are The Brothers Karamazov, The Crucible
and The Plague. All three of these texts use compelling arguments that make many characters’
question God’s intentions as well as the morally ideal way to live ones’ life. Personally, the
novels that I found most influential were The Brothers Karamazov and The Plague, because
these texts portray God in a very modern interpretation that I can relate to. The Crucible being
a text based on theocracy, is much more difficult to connect with modern day society, which I
believe aided to it contributing the least to my ethical sensibility.
Many Christian raised young adults, like myself, are believed to struggle with the conflict
of absolute morality and relative morality. There are surely many believers in God that cannot
truly understand all the ways the world operates. One thing that many Christians commonly
understand is that all men are created equal. The term “universal brotherhood” is portrayed
quite often in The Brothers Karamazov, by the character Zosima. Zosima believes in actively
loving mankind for each individual is a son or daughter of God. Zosima also preaches to
Alyosha that those who judge others are bound to a life of sin. One thing I derived from this
text was that once you begin to judge others it is almost impossible to stop. As humans, we
tend to judge others on the things they wear or how they act and begin to blend our judgments
with reality. People may see one thing about a person and make a totally false inference and
once that judgment has been made its almost impossible for that person to drop the idea that
they have formed about the other, even though they have no factual evidence for it. This
notion to never judge others, or even yourself, is a reoccurring theme in Christianity, the bible
and The Brothers Karamazov. Those who consistently judge themselves as well as others will
never truly be free. Zosima explains it best when he first confronts Fyodor by saying, “Above